


laughter lines

by f0xh0undvix3n



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-29 00:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16253096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/f0xh0undvix3n/pseuds/f0xh0undvix3n
Summary: Draft of a potential epilogue to my  prequel fic,  posted for Gilgardyn Week 2018 on Tumblr.





	laughter lines

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Episode Ardyn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12646323) by [f0xh0undvix3n](https://archiveofourown.org/users/f0xh0undvix3n/pseuds/f0xh0undvix3n). 



What the modern world called 'Taelpar Crag' had been formed in an age long passed out of mortal memory, when the fire of a renegade god's rage and rebellion was wrought upon Eos to burn it to ashes. Only one who wandered the scarred star still remembered when the skies had turned crimson-scarlet, burning with the flame of death that only the Archaean's strength had halted.  
  
He wondered, in the vague fits of nostalgia that struck him every few centuries, if perhaps extinction would have been better gotten over with rather than allow humankind to persist. Two thousand years hence the Meteor's fall had the plague of mortality thrived upon the planet, and a mere half-decade of night unending had begun to wear at the population bit by bit just as the scourge had in the days of the ancient war. In the days before the now forgotten sage sought to purify it.  
  
_In nocte perpetua, in desperatione,_  thought the man in black with a twisted smile. Truly, the old hymn from the kingdom's earliest days remained almost impressively accurate. Alone with his thoughts he walked a path worn by the steps of those who had sought to prove themselves protectors, or merely sought to prove themselves as  _something._  
  
To undertake the Trial of Gilgamesh was to gamble one's life on the wager that their sword and will were greater than any other. That they were  _worthy_  to be named Shield of the King. A low chuckle echoed off the stone alongside the sound of lazily taken steps. Worthy, wasn't that a joke? For countless years and generations soldiers had thrown themselves at death itself, not knowing they sought the approval of a coward and a traitor.  
  
He'd not made it far at all into the lands that had been named the Tempering Grounds before scattered suits of armor littered the ground like the corpses they had once held that had long turned to dust. A shimmering light floated around one--'pyreflies' had once been the term. Lost and wandering souls, bound to the realm of mortals by their own lingering sentiments. The endless canyon held  _hundreds_  of them from just as many eras, but the armor that assembled itself to its feet before golden eyes was familiar. Unknowably ancient and yet state of the art, raising a sword of make he knew well. The sentinel's blade sang through the air--

\--and was halted by no more than the leather-gloved hand of its target, whose yellow-gold eyes turned from faint amusement to something icy cold.

"Sheathe your blade," spoke the low growl of Ardyn Izunia, the first words he'd spoken in his native language for two millennia. Lost but not forgotten, smoothly woven together sounds-- _craydra ouin pmyta_ , a command in the dialect of central Solheim. In the language of  _home,_  where he knew that armor and sword alike had been forged.

The armored spirit halted as if flash frozen, blade gripped in a hand slowly leaking blackened blood.

" _You-_ " came a response in the same long-dead language, voice without form echoing in an empty metal shell. " _The Accurs-?_!"

Ardyn raised his other hand to the soldier's breastplate, and in a swirling torrent of blackened miasma and curses made manifest did the spectre fly backwards to crash into the cavern's rock wall in a tremendous crashing of armor pieces and abandoned blades.  
  
"Now, now. Is that  _any_  way to speak to your king?" A lightly amused tone filled his voice as he cast aside the ancient blade still in his hand, traces of black blood evaporating from its edge like smoke. Dusting his hands off as though he'd done no more than some light redecorating, Ardyn cast his gaze upwards and spoke in the modern world's common tongue, raised voice reverberating in the empty grounds devoid of life yet full of those who listened in horror and awe.  
  
"His Majesty Ardyn Lucis Caelum seeks audience with the Blademaster. I should perhaps note-" and the lightly casual mask fell away as his voice dropped to a growl, "- _that is not a request._  Tell your General that I will speak to him even should I tear every last one of you apart to do it."

A stillness fell in the air as though a chilled wind had blown through it, ominous even in the near pitch-dark halls of stone. One and all of the spirits who inhabited Taelpar Crag had fled at a breath from the creature wearing the face of a healer. Of their should-have-been-king, the monster in the dark who existed as no more than a whispered legend, a  _concept_  of the horrors of the night.  
  
It was so nice, he thought with a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, to finally be remembered and taken note of. Gone was the puppetmaster Chancellor tugging at strings from backstage, gone was the vague shadow in history that had fueled conflicts and caused all manner of misfortune from petty to cataclysmic. There was only  _Ardyn_  now, no more epithets save only for the one he gave himself. King of the dark and the night, ruling a blighted and dying star.

The story was nearly at its ending, the prophecy winding down to its final act. Soon even darkness would die, but before then there was one single curtain left to close on his way out.

It wasn’t a particularly long walk--long enough, he estimated, for the arrogant and foolish challengers to be beaten down and worn out. Long in the way a walk to the gallows was endless agony (and oh, wouldn’t Ardyn know all about that) with more than enough time to contemplate the conclusion.  
  
And Somnus had always called  _Ardyn_  the dramatic one, he thought with a crooked smile not reaching his eyes. Good heavens, if dear brother could see the bridge covered with swords from so many challengers; a graveyard of blades, and their master standing at the other end. One more ghost tethered to this world, beneath a starless sky.

“The mask is quite a different look on you.” he called out in a mockery of a casual greeting. Glowing scarlet eyes narrowed behind the ornate metal, which hardly deterred Ardyn from approaching in ambling, casual steps and glancing upward. “My, you’ve a lovely view of the sky from down here. Shame there’s naught to see but shadow, isn’t it?”

Silence. The falsely cheerful smile on Ardyn’s face slipped slightly at such a lack of response; usually people rose to bait like that as easily as flipping a switch. He never tired of people hating him; hatred was all that comprised Ardyn Izunia’s very existence. His every thought, action, and purpose was driven by bitterness and hatred. Steeped in darkness and the bitter fury of the daemonic force that comprised his body and tainted soul, there was no ability for him to remember feeling anything else.

Hatred made sense. Anger was easy. People were meant to despise him, that was the miserable gods’ goal all along. Create a darkness for the precious Chosen King to destroy, a night to herald the beloved dawn. Now there was but one single person left for Ardyn to see turned against him, then everything would be as it should have. He did so despise loose ends, after all.

“Gilgamesh. Will you not even speak to me? Oh, and I thought we were  _friends._ ” Cruelty sparked in yellow-gold eyes in contrast to the mock-offended tone. “Then again--my, that was ever my own mistake, wasn’t it? How ever so  _careless_  of me, to think people could be trusted. After all I did for you-”

“Ardyn.”

Silence fell again, as if the single name spoken from behind the mask was a sharp call to attention. A lone clawed gauntlet was raised-- _oh, someone got lucky and claimed your arm_ , Ardyn noted--to pull back the ragged hood and remove the intricately engraved mask, perhaps for the first time since the founding of Lucis itself.

Even in the darkness, silver hair shone like starlight illuminated only by the faint glow from the Meteor’s shards bridging the canyon like stitches to hold the planet together. Eyes of silver moonlight fixated on the former healer, and Gilgamesh looked at the man who would have been his king for the first time in two thousand years.

Ardyn’s confident smirk was one the Blademaster knew too well, enough that he also saw past it to the exhaustion laid beneath. He could remember a time when those inhuman yellow eyes were simply hazel, when hair blighted violet had once been deep red. A time when that smirk was genuine from a man who challenged a god turned renegade, who sought to save the world.

It was at its core something belonging distinctly to just  _Ardyn_ , and not that which played at being him in the shadows of the night.

“...oh, Ardyn,” he said at last, “you’ve been unable to rest all this time?”

“Excuse me?” That simple and almost  _sympathetic_  question saw a crack in the mask of detached indifference Ardyn wore, eyebrow raised as he questioned if he’d heard Gilgamesh correctly.

“I thought you  _gone,_ Ardyn. Supplanted by the burden you bore for the people; Somnus and I alike thought you dead--”

“ _Be silent._ ” The falsely amicable tone was dropped in favor of a snarl,  lazily held posture going rigid and coiled as if prepared to rip out the Blademaster’s throat in an instant. “You would tell me such a careless, transparent lie?! The  _beloved Founder_  thought nothing of the sort, else he’d never have sought to execute me as many times as he did!”

Anger was always smoldering beneath the surface of Ardyn’s composure, but now the sparks threatened to catch into a wildfire. In a crystalline flash the hilt of a thin greatsword was in his hand--toned in blood-red, the Blade of the Mystic. The arm of the Founder King himself, pointed at the swordsman who had never truly been defeated.

“Though I scarcely expect  _you_  to know that,” Ardyn continued with an accusation spat like poison, “for how you  _weren’t even there, coward.”_  
  
When his sworn charge had needed him, when Ardyn’s life was in the hands of king and country who turned their back on him...the first Shield of the King had chosen his side and vanished.

“We thought-... _gods, Ardyn_ , we thought you a daemon!” Ignoring the massive sword leveled at him, Gilgamesh took two careful steps forward. “Do you remember  _nothing_  of what happened-”

“I remember being murdered by my own brother. Screaming for my Shield’s protection only for my call to be answered with nothing. I remember  _Angelgard,_  praying to the dark that you might come for me and finding only madness in centuries’ solitude. Do not  _dare_  look at me and tell me all of it was a mistake, traitor. _”  
_

Again, silence fell as the vicious snarl fell flat upon the scourged night air. 

“You are right to call me traitor and coward. For I could not bear it, and so I refused to stand witness. I could not watch even a daemon put to death bearing the face of my king.” Another step to shorten the distance between them, and in answer Ardyn’s grip tightened on the hilt of his brother’s sword. “I ask not that you believe me, but had we known--had  _I_  known, I would have fought all of Lucis to save you; Astrals, humans, and even Somnus. I swore my life in service to you, and if it is that payment you demand-”

That single gauntlet reached out slowly to curl around the blade itself, Gilgamesh raising it to his own neck before dropping his hand away.

“-then I offer it, beloved.”

The formless corruption staining Ardyn’s very being screamed for blood and vengeance, shrieked  _he deserves it, it’s his fault, all his fault his fault his fault_

Somnus was paying for his part in it even as they spoke, the Old Wall bent to the will of the scourge and Ardyn alike. The only other remnant of Solheim deserved to suffer the fallen healer’s vengeance, a wraith cut down and forgotten.

So why was his hand unmoving on the grip of the blade? Why couldn’t he will his arm to move even with the roaring of a god-wrought malice demanding justice through revenge?  _Don’t believe him_ ,  _he’s lying, he’s lying, trust and love are meaningless_ -

...Ardyn had loved him once, hadn’t he? When he had known what love felt like, a sentiment long forgotten and lost to him now in anything more than some exploitable weakness felt in other people. It wasn’t something he  _comprehended_  any longer, not as anything Ardyn himself could feel.

Slowly, his iron grip uncurled and the greatsword vanished, immortal monster watching Gilgamesh with wide and confused golden eyes--staring as though he was struggling to find something buried deeper than the bottom of Taelpar Crag itself.

Two millennia passed in two minutes of silence, and at length the immortal Accursed spoke in a voice that felt and sounded very small.

“...I’m  _so tired_ , Gil.”

Two more steps closed the distance between them, arm wrapping around the shoulders of a broken and bitter healer who had lived in the darkness that surrounded them for far too long, and Ardyn leaned into the contact from a wraith who had waited and tested countless protectors to see that just one would possess strength of will that the Shield of the Founder had not.

“Please...remain here, even if for too short a time.”

Of course--even the lingering sentiments of the grounds would know the prophecy’s end was near. And Gilgamesh, brilliant Gilgamesh would understand now what that meant for the darkness incarnate in his embrace.

“...Not long.” Ardyn said in confirmation to the question that had not been directly asked. But even so, his eyes slid closed and his arms came to rest around his Shield’s waist.

“I’ve...a family reunion to attend, very soon.”


End file.
